On PR's "Potion Of Get-The-Fuck-Out"

(This was amusing enough that I thought I'd share. Sorry for my long-windedness.)

Normally, I'm never one to assign mystical causes to mundane events; in my teenage years I saw one too many fluffy-bunny (is that term not PC anymore? I can't keep up) running around blaming curses, evil spirits, "bad energy" and the like for their marital troubles, failing occult shop, general clumsiness, seasonal allergies (seriously), and whole hosts of other problems. I learned young that most of the shit that happens in your life is simply a product of you not having your shit together. Perhaps this is one of the reason's I'm so attracted to Jason's Strategic Sorcery approach.

The side-effect of growing up in this frame of mind is that for a long time I completely overlooked the benefits of cleansing and blessing my living spaces on a regular basis, particularly those practices that required my lazy ass to actually get on my hands and knees and scrub down the floor/baseboards (Here I'd normally link to a host of bloggers who would berate me for this, but fuck if I can find the links I want when I need them). This was all well and good for me until recently, when I found myself in an emotionally compromised state, when, as they say, it all came crashing down around my ears.

First, I fell ill with the worst viral infection I've ever had in my life. Now, I'm very good with pain, I have a relatively strong immune system, and I can usually self-medicate rough illnesses into submission (I would hope so, being in a pharmacy Ph.D. program). So to say that for two weeks I was repeatedly brought down to crying in bed like a little girl and literally crawling my way to the kitchen to feed myself honestly hurts my pride a bit. I had enough blood-tests done to make my arms look like those of an addict, with no definitive results.

When I finally crawled my way back into the light of the outside world, I found myself in the odd position of what I can only describe as carrying a bubble of irrationality with me. Perfectly happy, chatty, rational, long-time friends would turn into testy, illogical minefields when I'd stay in a room with them for any length of time. Trying to get school paperwork done, in an office of what are usually very helpful and understanding people, became a nightmare of red tape and being brushed off outright. Professors only accommodated my makeup work because I pushed them up against university rules. Etc, etc.

While I was still trying to figure out what the fuck was going on, spiders. I'm not shitting you. Tiny newborn spiders invaded my apartment by the hundreds.

Which made falling ill for a second time, only a week or so after recovering from the first, awkward. You try spraying your ceiling and sleeping on the couch while running a fever. So, in the grandest of student traditions, I retreated to good 'ol mom's house (the feverish hundred-mile interstate drive was... interesting). And wouldn't you know, not 24 hours later, I felt better. Better, I realized, than I had in months. The kind of better I sometimes felt in small doses when I left my place to...

Fucking lightbulb.

Maybe, just maybe, I let myself think, there was something more than a string of coincidences at work here. I had to clean my infested apartment out anyway, I figured, so why not come back guns-blazing with an all-out magical cleansing as well? Couldn't hurt, at any rate.

So I concocted what I've dubbed "Pallas Renatus' Potion Of Get-The-Fuck-Out". In hindsight, it's clearly overkill, as I think it also removed some of whatever it was that made the place feel "homey". It's like I've just moved into the apartment again. Better than the alternative, though. So with that in mind, here's what I made, in case anyone else finds themselves in need of the materia-magic equivalent of a nuclear warhead:

Yes, that says "For research purposes". Story for a later date.

Find yourself a tin of chewing tobacco. I suggest some sort of mint flavor, to offset the ungodly smell of what you're about to do next, but it doesn't really matter.

Smells as bad as it looks, trust me

Throw the whole tin of it in a pot with about two cups of water and bring it to a boil, then turn down and let simmer for half an hour or so. Opening windows is suggested. Spiders hate this shit; besides poisoning the ones that are directly exposed to it, even a tiny amount of residue will keep them from coming back.

Thrifty magicians have no shame about reusing old sauce jars.

Strain into something reusable. I didn't realize it at the time, but so little of this stuff is needed that one concoction will last you for years... or divide nicely into tiny bottles to sell :-)

I prefer lemon. Just don't use anything labeled "soapy".

Add a splash of ammonia. A tablespoon or so is all that's necessary for spiritual purposes, but if I had been smart, I would have done a room-temperature extraction of the tobacco overnight in a cup or so of straight household ammonia, then diluted it by half with water, if only to avoid the smell. Lesson learned.

I found this lovely cubed form in the "ethnic hair products"
section of my local pharmacy. Go figure.

While the solution is still hot, add some powdered camphor. Save a bit of it to burn later. The camphor won't dissolve completely, but give it a good stir to get it dispersed evenly. I advise against closing the bottle of hot liquid and shaking. Try it and find out why.










Open all your windows, light up a bit of the camphor you saved, invoke whatever kick-ass guardian/warrior spirit you like (I used Michael), belt out a general license to depart, and get to work scrubbing down every floorboard, door-frame, and window-frame in the house, as well as where the ceiling meets the walls. A few drops on a wet sponge is all you will need if you don't want to stain your woodwork green or have to go over everything a second time with a clean sponge.

Take some time when you're done to invoke a few choice higher beings and generally bless the living space. I'd wait a good day or so before re-inviting any familiars, land-spirits, or other spirits on the more visceral end of the scale in, as the camphor will be unpleasant at best for them.

As I mentioned before, all this was probably a bit overkill. The "familiar" feeling of my home of two years was suddenly gone, and took several weeks to reestablish itself. But on the other hand, everything I mentioned above disappeared or resolved almost overnight. Even a lot of the paperwork I mentioned above got pushed through the next day without my intervention.

Moral of the story? Banish your shit.


Edit: If anyone wants a little 1/2 oz. vial of this stuff, you know, for those "just in case" moments that crop up a little too often, shoot me an email (link in my profile) and I'll mail some out to you for free. Lord knows I have more than I'll ever need or use.

On Addictive Personalities

Oh my, it's been awhile. Which is sort of the inspiration for this post, I suppose.

As magicians, we often spend an inordinate amount of time pondering cause-and-effect relationships. How will the stars effect my work? How did my work effect my life? Why didn't my work, well, work? It's sort of comes with the territory.

One of the things I rarely see, however, is people questioning why they're attracted to certain areas or types of work. If one takes a sudden interest in Voodoo, for instance, odds are you'll be so wrapped up in studying the subject that you won't stop to think about why you're suddenly energized and nearly completely focused on this one subject, perhaps only to lose interest a few days/weeks/months later. Or perhaps we find a new terribly interesting subject, and simply bound off to study it, without considering what we're leaving behind.

I could easily say that the reason I haven't posted for so long (in the meantime completely neglecting my occult studies and practices) is because my long-term relationship recently ended, or because I've been busy preparing for graduation, or because I've spent a lot of time (re)applying to pharmacy schools. But to be perfectly honest with you, and with myself, the real answer is that a lot of new shiny objects (in the way of friends, booze, video games, a new job, and school opportunities) got dangled in front of me all at once, and for all my boundless interest, the things I considered important got left behind.

So why did this happen? The fuck if I know, but at least I'm thinking about it. And if it's on my mind, there's hope that when it happens again (and it will, I'm sure), I'll recognize it, and perhaps handle things with a bit more balance and grace the second time around.

For now, though, the champagne's popped (literally), and it's time to leave a few hundred blog comments. Let's do this.

On Omens and Wishful Thinking

[Please excuse my long absence. I meant to post this around Christmas and never got the chance.]

I thought Christmas might be an appropriate time to post these particular musings.

A few weeks ago after reading one of Gordon's excellent posts, I fired off some sigils to St. Nicholas on his feast day. The day after, I mailed the cards they were written on to the North Pole (seriously, read the address and tell me it's not perfect) and dropped the remains of the candles that had burnt down over them into a storm grate at a three-way crossroads. I felt it was a unique, but mostly silly endeavor.

The next day, I happened to be in a mall with my ladyfriend. Being rather tired, I was completely oblivious to everything except for whichever clothing rack happened to be directly in front of me at the moment. It was loud enough that my ladyfriend, only feet away, was struggling to hear me over the general din of the customers around us (and I'm not exactly a quiet dude). Very suddenly, though, my ears pricked up, and the hubbub seemed to die away very suddenly as I heard a blip of the music that the store had been playing. "Santa Claus is coming..." and the noise jumped up just as suddenly, drowning out the rest of the song.

Now, I thought this was funny and ironic, but not particularly revelatory. Still, it did make me pause for a moment with a stupid grin on my face (note to dudes: standing with a stupid grin on your face while holding a lady's scarf and skirt may earn you some odd looks). We moved along to the next store.

And wouldn't you know, it happened again. Same song, different store, exact same four words seeming to jump out of nowhere before disappearing. Bigger, stupider smile (at least this time I was holding something with an appropriately witty statement on it). Of course, this set me to thinking.

I've never been one for Omens; I rarely have moments where I know something Significant has happened, and it's even less often that I know what that moment means. Part of me would love to pass this off as Priming and wishful thinking; to say that my attention pricked up so readily simply because I'd gone to sleep thinking about my experiment. And yet somehow the suddenness of that shift of attention makes the moment seem almost external, as if it were a message being purposefully conveyed.

A lot of occultists will mention in passing having a particular "zing" that separates an omen from a funny or ironic coincidence (and since my life is pretty much an exercise in irony, I've got plenty of the latter). I'm not sure if a sudden shift in the acuity of my hearing counts, but it's gotten my interested in what exactly people mean when they talk about their "omen zing". Try to qualify it for me; what does it feel/sound/look/taste like? Leave a comment, for science!

On Where Not To Find Spirits

The past few weeks have been a flurry of caffeine- and fear-fueled activity for me. Normally I'd like to use that as an excuse for my recent spiritual inertia, but to be honest it's a recurring problem in my life and I'd be lying to myself if I did.

Seeing that the worst of my situation is over, though, I thought tonight would be a good time to celebrate with my invisible friends. Now, I wouldn't say I'm a particularly gifted psychic or scryer, but as I was watching threads of incense curl around the water glass and over the candle flame, a few thoughts on the subject occurred to me.

The first was an exercise I read years ago on a now-defunct website, whose content eventually became Kabbalah, Magic & the Great Work of Self Transformation. Basically, the exercise entailed spending a full week trying to perceive "hollow" objects (cups, doorways, etc) in terms of space rather than form. For example, you'd see the space in a room, the space in a doorway, and the space in the next room as one continuous medium, rather than see "the door" as a discrete object. How mind-bending (and/or fun) this was depended on how deeply you threw yourself into the exercise.

But as I recalled this seemingly random memory, I suddenly understood why so many people have trouble with scrying, especially in incense smoke or another 3-D medium. They're looking at the smoke, instead of at the space itself. Although I hadn't been trying to summon any spirits into physical appearance (I'm not in the habit of coercing my guests into performing party tricks), or even trying to scry anything, I started looking at the space between the threads of incense. And wouldn't you know, there were forms there, dragging small threads along their frames like wisps of... well, smoke.

Maybe you really do need the blood of a dove and a half-pound of incense to properly see a spirit. Or maybe we're just looking in the wrong place. I don't pretend to know, but I sure as hell plan to experiment with this more.

On Fearing the Self (and dealing with it)

Balthazar's recent post on Divinatory Literacy has gotten my mind reeling for a number of reasons, not the least effect of which is pondering the enormously varied ways in which people purposefully delude themselves.

Most Magicians make no secret of the fact that we are often our own worst enemy. This is true tenfold where self-exploration (even when not sought after) is concerned, because we have to bypass the human tendency to reinforce our own mental map of the universe and take a blind leap into the uncertain... which is understandably terrifying. Hell, for all we know, we'll come out the other end insane (or worse, ridiculed).

What is weird to me is that people usually set out on a magical path for one or both of two reasons: power over their situation, and betterment of the self (discovering Truth, etc). Whichever your goal, you're obviously not currently in a position to be getting what you want, which is why you pick up magic to begin with. In any case, a sudden shift in viewpoint is exactly what you want and most likely need. You've been pining for that "So THAT'S why it didn't work!" moment when everything makes sense and the larger picture helps you understand what to do next.

And yet every day we see people clinging to a single (often inane) idea they've found in a book, or a broken "system" they've picked up on a message board, or their cosmology, or any number of other personal maps, and just as often it is blatantly clear that these things are not helping them in their above-stated goals. So why hold on to them?

For the same reason we hold on to every other piece of junk in our lives. Read Gordon's post. Do a ruthless physical purge of your possessions. Then turn the lens inward and go through your beliefs and practices, singling out each one and asking yourself what would happen if the possibility arose that your belief was completely and utterly false? What if that practice was quite clearly useless? What would you want to hold onto, justifying and rationalizing, instead of dropping it instantly? Why? Is the comfort you have in the sureness of your beliefs worth hamstringing your magic?

Just food for thought. If I could find the proper post to link to, I'd reference Frater R.O.'s wonderful "Oh Shit" moment where he let go of his long-held views on Goetic magic and adopted something that works much better for him. He could have just as easily (if not much more easily) stuck to his guns and have dealt with the fallout, but instead he adapted and came out better for it.

Perhaps it's the explorer instinct, or perhaps I'm just a little unhinged, but I'd much rather be jumping headlong into a world that doesn't make sense (yet) than be the skeptic in Balthazar's post, paying people and hoping that they're wrong so that I can prove I'm already (and have always been) right.

What are you holding on to?

On Free Stuff (which surprisingly doesn't suck)

I've spent more time this October posting comments on blog-based giveaways than I care to admit to. Some of the stuff was cool, some of it sucked; all of it was free marketing for people who really need more people to visit their shops.

Leave it to Gordon to create a giveaway so awesome that I actually break my rule of not posting about giveaways. But you all should be following his blog already anyway, so uh, sorry for filling your feed reader with crap? Not really. Word is there's some sweet schwag in it for me.

On Infuriating Astrological Timings

Wow, what a title; some background, perhaps.

On Monday morning I'll be making a call, half asking for payment on a past promise, and half asking for a favor. A good outcome will permanently solidify my career path and relieve months of anxiety on my part. A bad outcome leave a huge amount of uncertainty and hard work over the next 4 to 9 months, without the certainty of a silver lining. Magic is in order, naturally. To the charts!

Lets see, Levanah (the Moon) will be peaking it's fullness (an excellent time for bringing things to completion) on this Friday night, the day of Nogah (Venus, ruling over the magic of Favors). But furthermore, it's coming into exact fullness within minutes of the exact center of the planetary hour of Nogah, giving me an absolutely wonderful half-hour window in which to preform a ritual to garner the favors of the person of power that I'll be calling.

Great! Lets go prep the ritual gear. Except wait, what's that you say? Levanah's void-of-course runs right over the entirety of my "perfect window"? Everything I start during that period will fail spectacularly? Great. *Hastily stuffs the gear away* And Levanah's next Void may or may not run right over the time I'd scheduled for this call? *Sigh* Perhaps I should push it to around 2 p.m. on Monday, just in case. I can still appear professional without ringing someone at 10 in the morning, right? (The person I'm calling is not expecting the call, so I have a bit of leeway here).

But wait! There's always more. I'd forgotten that Nogah went retrograde on the 8th of this month. Sonofabitch. Is this such a bad thing? I'm not astrologically savvy enough to tell. It seems to be stirring up trouble in Akrab (Scorpio), causing fits of vindictive jealousy, but also a sense of intense loyalty. Since my original plan was to clearly but subtly show my loyalty to the organization in question in hopes of inspiring the same from them, and since the person I'm calling has no real reason to feel jealousy towards me, perhaps this is actually a good time to be making this particular call. But when to do the magic?

I do work late on Saturday (Shabbathai's day), but with the aid of a few beverages of choice and some patience, I do have a good Void-free shot at each planet's hour (two shots for most) in which to do some bindings. Perhaps as follows:

• A binding of the career path that this institution can offer me to myself during the hour of Shabbathai (Saturn); perhaps also some reversal magic for the bad luck that got me into this situation to begin with.
• A binding of the two main individuals of power involved (one of whom is the one I'll be calling) to show mercy unto me during the hour of Tzedek (Jupiter).
• A binding of these same individuals' senses of enthusiasm and protection to the proposition I'll be making during the hour of Madim (Mars).
• A binding to make my success and happiness a matter of pride to them during the hour of Shemesh (the Sun).
• A binding for the fulfillment of the individual promises made to me by these two individuals made some months back during the hour of Nogah (Venus); perhaps also a binding of their emotions to make them emotionally sympathetic to my situation.
• A binding upon their intellect, so that fulfilling their promises seems the only logical choice, during the hour of Kokab (Mercury).
• And last but certainly not least, a binding upon them to enact the changes in situation that must be made during the hour of Levanah (the Moon).

Depending on how late I'm up doing this, I might collapse into a chair in the back yard to watch the sun rise and start my Sunday off right with a round of invocations and meditations. Or maybe just the collapsing bit.

If I weren't in a financially tough situation at the moment, I'd pay for some good Electionary Astrology in a heartbeat, to see when the best time to make this call would be. But as it is, given the short time span, slinging bindings left and right and trying my hardest not to swim upstream will have to do.

On a side note, I'm debating waiting to publish this article until after I make the call mentioned above, what with silence being so important to some people's magic. But fuck it, I've spent the past few hours being careful, and this way I can get a good slap on the head if someone notices a mistake in my stargazing (or rather, webpage-about-stargazing-gazing).